MILF denies links with Al Qaida

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) yesterday denied links with the international militant organisations of Al Qaida and the Jemaah Islamiya.

Washington has linked MILF central committee chief Salamat Hashim to Osama bin Laden and Omar Al-Faruq. The latter is now in U.S. custody after his arrest in Indonesia in June.

"That's not true. We don't have links with Osama bin Laden or Al Qaida network, not even Jemaah Islamiya," MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu told reporters.

CNN's special feature story, Jihad, in its Asia broadcast late Saturday, showed Western intelligence reports saying that bin Laden had spoken to Hashim on the phone for the setting up of an Al Qaida training facility inside an MILF camp in southern Philippines.

According to intelligence documents, the man who set it up was senior Al Qaida operative, Omar Al Faruq. He first came to south-east Asia via the Philippines in 1994, along with another Al Qaida leader from Afghanistan.

Al Faruq travelled to the main MILF headquarters, Camp Abubakar Al Siddique, in Maguindanao province.

There, he set up the first Al Qaida training camp in south-east Asia. At least two more would follow - one, according to telephone intercepts by a Western intelligence agency, after a direct request by Osama bin Laden to MILF chief Salamat Hashim, CNN reported.

The CNN story by South-east Asia Bureau Chief, Maria Ressa, did not identify the information source for the article.